USFWS Region 7 Alaska Nonnative Plant Surveys - 2025 Survey Data

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 19,813 records.

3 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is United States Fish and Wildlife Service. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 6e93498d-2585-4d2d-818a-81cb368c1165.  United States Fish and Wildlife Service publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF-US.

Keywords

Occurrence; invasive species; Observation

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

The geographic extent included much of southern, western, central, and northern Alaska, USA.

Taxonomic Coverage

We surveyed for selected lists of non-native vascular plant species. In most surveys we limited our searches to high priority invasive species, but in some surveys we surveyed exhaustively for all non-native vascular plant species.

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

In accordance with the orders of Executive Office of the President (2016) to prevent introduction, establishment, and spread of invasive species and to control and eradicate established populations, with an aim of minimizing their damage to the environment and natural resources, teams from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region surveyed for and treated non-native plants on and around Alaska National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska. This dataset includes occurrences resulting from these efforts.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

Four teams (Island Invasive Strike Team, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Biology Team, North Region Early Detection Rapid Response Team, and South Region Early Detection Rapid Response Team) collected non-native plant data following Alaska Exotic Plant Information Clearinghouse database standards (AKEPIC, 2018, 2020, 2026). The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Biology Team followed the protocol of Bowser (2025d) for elodea surveys.

Method step description:

1. We collected data in the field using one of multiple ESRI Survey123 (https://survey123.arcgis.com/) forms (Bowser, 2025b; USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team, 2025a, 2025c). Instructions for these forms are available from Bowser (2025a).
2. Data were checked using a Quarto (https://quarto.org/) script (USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team, 2025b) that ran R, version 4.4.2 (R Core Team, 2024) and used the R packages arcgisbinding, version 1.0.1.311 (Esri, 2024); fontawesome, version 0.5.3 (Iannone, 2024); leaflet, version 2.2.3 (Cheng et al., 2025); and sf, version 1.0-20 (Pebesma, 2018; Pebesma and Bivand, 2023). These data were reformatted to the Biotic Observation Minimum Specification format (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Wildlife Refuge System, Inventory & Monitoring Branch, 2023) using a Quarto script (USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team, 2026) that ran R, version 4.5.2 (R Core Team, 2025) and used the R packages arcgisbinding, version 1.0.1.311 (Esri, 2024); h3jsr, version 1.3.1 (O’Brien, 2023); sf, version 1.0-24 (Pebesma, 2018; Pebesma and Bivand, 2023); and uuid, version 1.2-2 (Urbanek and Ts’o, 2026).

Bibliographic Citations

1. AKEPIC (2018) Alaska Exotic Plants Information Clearinghouse (AKEPIC) data dictionary. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Natural Heritage Program, Alaska Center for Conservation Science, University of Alaska, Anchorage. https://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/wp-content/uploads/AKEPIC_DataDictionary.pdf https://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/wp-content/uploads/AKEPIC_DataDictionary.pdf
2. AKEPIC (2020) Alaska Exotic Plants Information Clearinghouse (AKEPIC) user’s manual. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Center for Conservation Science, University of Alaska, Anchorage. https://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/wp-content/uploads/AKEPIC_UserManual.pdf https://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/wp-content/uploads/AKEPIC_UserManual.pdf
3. AKEPIC (2026) Alaska Exotic Plant Information Clearinghouse database. Anchorage, Alaska: Alaska Center for Conservation Science, University of Alaska, Anchorage. https://akepic.portal.axds.co https://akepic.portal.axds.co
4. Bowser ML (2025a) Alaska Region invasive plant surveys Survey123 form instructions. Alaska: United States Fish and Wildlife Service. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182042 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182042
5. Bowser ML (2025b) Kenai non-native plant surveys 2025 Survey123 XLSForm, version 2025-05-30T1235AKDT. Soldotna, Alaska: United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182017 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182017
6. Bowser ML (2025c) Sampling design for Kenai National Wildlife Refuge aquatic invasive species surveys, 2025. Soldotna, Alaska: United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/188315 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/188315
7. Bowser ML (2025d) Site-specific protocol for aquatic invasive species management. Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Version 0.5. Soldotna, Alaska: United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182422 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/182422
8. Cheng J, Schloerke B, Karambelkar B, Xie Y & Aden-Buie G (2025) leaflet: Create interactive web maps with the JavaScript ’Leaflet’ library. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=leaflet https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=leaflet
9. Esri (2024) arcgisbinding: Bindings for ArcGIS. http://esri.com http://esri.com
10. Executive Office of the President (2016) Executive Order 13751 of December 5, 2016. Safeguarding the nation from the impacts of invasive species. 2016-29519 (81 FR 88609), Federal Register, 81(236), pp. 88609–88614. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/08/2016-29519/safeguarding-the-nation-from-the-impacts-of-invasive-species https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/08/2016-29519/safeguarding-the-nation-from-the-impacts-of-invasive-species
11. Iannone R (2024) fontawesome: Easily work with ’Font Awesome’ icons. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=fontawesome https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=fontawesome
12. O’Brien L (2023) h3jsr: Access Uber’s H3 library. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=h3jsr https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=h3jsr
13. Pebesma E (2018) Simple Features for R: Standardized support for spatial vector data, The R Journal, 10(1), pp. 439–446. https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2018-009 https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2018-009
14. Pebesma E & Bivand R (2023) Spatial data science: With applications in R. Chapman and Hall/CRC. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429459016 https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429459016
15. R Core Team (2024) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/ https://www.R-project.org/
16. R Core Team (2025) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/ https://www.R-project.org/
17. Urbanek S & Ts’o T (2026) uuid: Tools for generating and handling of UUIDs. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.uuid https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.uuid
18. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Wildlife Refuge System, Inventory & Monitoring Branch (2023) Biotic Observation Minimum Specification for FWS inventory and monitoring surveys. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/153885 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/153885
19. USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team (2025a) North Region Early Detection and Rapid Response Survey123 XLSForm for nonnative plant surveys, 2025. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/191748 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/191748
20. USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team (2025b) Quarto document for checking data from USFWS R7 invasive plant surveys. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190355 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190355
21. USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team (2025c) South Region Early Detection and Rapid Response Survey123 XLSForm for nonnative plant surveys, 2025. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/191751 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/191751
22. USFWS R7 Invasive Species Data Coordination Team (2026) Quarto document for reformatting USFWS R7 invasive plant surveys occurrence data for archival as a BOMS/DwC dataset. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190352 https://iris.fws.gov/APPS/ServCat/Reference/Profile/190352

Additional Metadata